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Monday, February 6, 2012

Yog Interview

1. Can you give us an update on what is going on with the band these days?

1. Can you give us an update on what is going on with the band these days?

I guess we can say that we are “back on track” after more than a year of almost total absence. Lots of things changed after the record of Half The Sky, Alex wanted to spend more time on his studies so he left at the end of 2010, and Manu came back in the band right away. Then Matthieu became a father and we clearly felt he was not anymore in the mood of being a badass guitar player like before. In spite of this, it took an eternity until he got out, which put us in some sort of “stand by” for a huge part of 2011. And you know, with no gigs on the task list, you can’t get a release of your album by a label. Finally, a joke about Marc (our sound engineer) replacing Matthieu in the band turned out to be the best thing to do. He’s got the skills, the motivation, the spirit, he has been a friend for so many years, and last but no least he is the only one interested !!! So there we go, we’got a new guitarist and we are back on track. Half The Sky was released end of 2011 and we will be playing a few gigs this spring and then probably get back to creating new material for another recording session before the end of 2012.

2. How would you describe the musical sound of the new album and how it differs from previous releases?
Much more harsh, crude, gross. First because it was recorded by someone whose colour and taste is much more of a “right in your face” thing, and second because we needed to do it differently from the first album (Years Of Nowhere). The voice and the drums have been put forward this time, whereas it was the guitars that were last time. The next release with bear the perfect balance, hopefully !

3. What are some of the lyrical topics and subjects the band explores with the music/
We have no album concept in terms of lyrics, we just take what comes in. Yonni finished his studies last summer, he used to study philosophy, he therefore writes things that are more likely inspired from philosophical concepts he’s read and liked. I think of songs like “Solar Nature” or “Stones” that are inspired from things Nietzsch has written. Another one would be “Breaking The Spell”.

4. What is the meaning and inspiration behind the band name/
It was a stupid idea of our very first guitarist who thought this name had 2 sides : a funny side coming from the word “yogurt” and a brutal barbarian side if you say it out loud with a heavy voice… don’t ask me more about that ( ! We kept it cause it sounded good.

5. What are some of the best shows that the band has played so far and how would you describe your stage performance?
There has been a few good ones. Very probably we had the most fun when we played at that Dollhouse thing back in the summer of 2007. It was on a Saturday afternoon, with just a bunch of people composed of our friends, the organisers and visitors of this outdoor event the Dollhouse was part of. None of them was expecting that but they loved it. Great time. Great fun. We try to give the best on stage, living the music as much as we can. Hopefully, the ambiance is as crazy as the music.

6. Do you have any touring plans for the future?
We are still teaching our new guitarist (former guitarist who recorded Half The Sky with us, has left the band last Fall), so we have not yet been able to look too much into this. Still, we’ve had a few nice proposals for the Spring. We will be playing 2 shows around in March, then a 3 shows in France and Belgium and then the “release party” show on April 7th in our favourite local rock club. The first ones will be short shows because of our new guitarist not yet knowing all the songs, but he is progressing !

7. On a worldwide level how has your music been recieved by grindcore fans?
I don’t know how much we can talk about “worldwide level”… we are a small band, and we have never yet tried to move too much to the international. Even though the Years Of Nowhere album was distributed in a few European countries plus the USA, we have not received a lot of recognition. And then here and there, you get a message from a fanatic that has grabbed your album you don’t know where and tells you how much he loves your music. This is just awesome. Lately it was someone in Japan.

8. What direction do you see your music heading into on future releases?
It is very probably going to slow down a little bit, we think we have explored the extreme stuff enough. I mean by this the speed thing and the stamina you need to play this. You have to work hard to get these things to sound well. We love it of course, but lately we have been thinking of trying to get more fun executing the stuff. Trying to make things a little bit less “binding” if I can say so. It will never turn into a “easy to grab music” because we love the intricate stuff so much. But maybe more groove now and then. And also Marc, our new guitarist, is partially a kid of the industrial metal scene, which means “he likes the groovy stuff”. It will remain crazy, chaotic and heavy anyway.

9. Are there any side projects besides this band or is this a full time line-up?
When we hired Yonni, he was the singer of a local post-hardcore band called “Kehlvin”, which is about to release their second full length next April. I am also part of this band too, since they needed a second guitarist about 4 years ago. Yonni, toghether with Kehvlin’s other guitarist, is part of another project called “Clinical path”, a weird noisy ambient thing with lots of drones and sampling, bit of guitar and singing, and a writer reading his texts on top of it. A very strange but interesting experimental project. Last year I founded a rock band with Emmanuel (YOG’s bass player) for a single gig and it turned to be that cool, we kept the band. It does not bear a real name yet, but it’s growing and we plan to make a record before the end of the year. It is sort of mixture of things like The Hives, The Hellacopters, Queens of the Stone Age. Pretty cool.

10. What are some bands or musical styles that have influenced your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?
The bands that have most influenced our music are things like The Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, Pig Destroyer, Napalm Death, Gojira, Ion Dissonnance, Meshuggah or Knut. But we do listen to much more stuff. Yonni is probably the one having the largest sonic experience in terms of hardcore bands. We do listen to all sorts of rock stuff, jazz, even some reggae. We all are great admirers of The Mars Volta. I do love the Foo Fighters alongside crazy things such as Hella, or The Cinematic Orchestra.

11. Outside of music what are some of your interests?
Beer and pussy. Bit of sport too. I think we all love watching cool movies. I love science-fiction above all.

12. Any final words or thoughts before we wrap up this interview?
We’re growing old, but we’re not finished ! ( We’ll have some more to propose this year I think. HALF THE SKY has taken much too long to get released, we will put out a new record as soon as possible. Stay tuned. Long live rock’n’roll.